I will address you both as adults, even though you clearly are not. The fact that you could use your site to make fun of an abused, frightened teenager is the most abhorrent thing I have ever seen by supposed “professional” commentators. Your decision that this kid was a fake was the type of arrogance I would expect to see from a 5th grader, not an adult. If you have nothing better to do than direct derision and contempt towards a child, then maybe you should stop pretending you are anything more than bullies who have nothing better to do with their lives.You deserve all of the contempt possible. And hopefully, you will pay a price for your arrogance and immaturity.Kurt Eichenwald

Not content with that, he followed up with this:

Thu, February 21, 2013 8:01 PMRe: you are both despicableFrom: KURT EICHENWALD <kurtewald@me.com>To: Chris Smith <smitty1e@gmail.com>; “r.s.mccain@att.net” <r.s.mccain@att.net>Oh, and by the way, you immature bastards….I have invited my 7,000 twitter followers to contact your advertisers and demand they stop advertising with your site. And they’re doing it.Have a nice life. You bastards.

Well, this was certainly a charming introduction to Kurt Eichenwald, and he is a man of his word, because a few hours later, one of our advertisers forwarded to me this e-mail:

Subject: your add on a hate siteDate: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:00:11 -0600From: KURT EICHENWALD <kurtewald@me.com>To: [REDACTED]You are currently advertising on a site called http://theothermccain.com. In the last two days, these “adults” took a youtube video of a young gay teen who was both coming out and revealing abuse he has been suffering at the hands of his mother and not only made fun of him (for his haircut!), but invited their followers to do the same. The followers happily complied. This site does not represent your values. Moreover, this child is clearly depressed and discussed the times he considered suicide. If the torment of these “adults” on this site contributes to the boy acting on those feelings, you would not want to have any connection to it.Many thanks.Kurt EichenwaldContributing EditorVanity Fair914-552-2588

Go read it all, Stacy McCain, A.K.A. Stupid Haircut Hater makes some good points. This kid DID go public with this, so he made it public. And, yes, a bit of cynicism is not a bad thing

The thought occurred to me that (a) the kid is basically inviting everybody to attend his pity party, and (b) our sarcastic commenters were likely to say rude things about him.

The video already had nearly 20,000 views in barely a week and — in case this didn’t cross anybody else’s mind – that translates to a bit of YouTube advertising revenue for young Austin Gates. So he’s like a professional pity-party event planner or something.

Are his tales of abuse and suicidal thoughts true? Has anyone verifiedhis story? “If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” but if a kid says his mother hates him, don’t bother, eh?

Habitual cynicism, that’s my problem. Having been a teenage hoodlum myself, I see a video like that and instantly think: “Scam.”

Kid’s probably hustling contributions to buy himself some weed. Or maybe he’s angling for a guest spot on daytime TV talk shows, maybe even a reality TV series deal. For all we know, the minute the video ended, Austin Gates was high-fiving his buddies: “How was that, huh? Did you like that whiny thing I did at the end about suicide? Hey, man, fire up the bong and let’s burn some buds.”

We’re not supposed to think that way anymore, I guess. It’s “bullying” to see a mopey kid and say, “Stop moping — and get a haircut!”

If this kid has gone through the things he describes, then I feel for him. I would not wish that on any kid. And I hope he gets whatever help he needs to get past it Some might accuse Stacy McCain of being insensitive, and maybe that is fair. But, from what I know of the man I doubt he would deliberately add to anyone’s pain. And, in a larger sense, I abhor these boycotts. They smack of censorship, and totalitarianism to me. So maybe Kurt Eichenwald ought to wait and see what all the facts are? And maybe everyone who loves free speech, and making fun of bad haircuts should contact Kurt Eichenwald 914-552-2588, and let him know!

Here you go, Chris Rock telling us the Barack and Michelle are our “parents” and the president is our boss, and that we better listen and obey.

Rock, apparently, has no grasp of the Constitution, or of individual liberty. He is, in short, ignorant. And he serves as an example of why the Left wants all of us to be ignorant. The greatest threat to the implementation of a Leftist Utopia is an informed populace.

I suppose I could also call Wolcott the most incessantly boring writer of the 21st century, but, again, that would be redundantly redundant. So, I will just call him Mr. Irrelevant instead.Of course, right now, you are likely scratching your head and wondering who in the Hell James Wolcott is. I will allow Stacy McCain to explain

News Flash: James Wolcott, who for years has had a Vanity Fair column nobody reads, now has a Twitter account nobody follows.

Because you have probably never heard of James Wolcott, it is necessary to explain that he is a cadaverous-looking college dropout who spent years as an unpopular media critic at the Village Voice before becoming an unpopular columnist at Vanity Fair. His knowledge of politics is extremely limited, asI noted in April 2008:

If James Wolcott is being paid by the word, his 3,700-word screed in the June issue of Vanity Fair is the Crime of the Century. The article is presented as describing the “vicious Clinton-versus-Obama rupture at Daily Kos” and thus an analysis of “a party-wide split” among Democrats, but it’s really nothing of the kind. In fact, it’s nothing at all. There is no reporting and very little that could be called research. Just massive paragraph after paragraph of florid prose.

So far as anyone can tell, Wolcott never ventures outside Manhattan and can’t be bothered to do any actual reporting. He has attempted to remain “relevant” by adding a blog that nobody reads to his duties at Vanity Fair, whose publisher apparently hired him as a favor to Wolcott’s wife, an editor for the magazine.

Last year, Wolcott somehow inveigled Doubleday into publishing his memoir. Nobody read that either, mainly because the author is so notoriously dull, but perhaps also because readers had been warned via a New York Times reviewthat Wolcott “devotes 50 genuflecting pages” of his 258-page memoir to film critic Pauline Kael.

No, I’m not kidding. Really.

Yes, I think that about covers it, and I got to repost Stacy’s shot at Charles “Mr. Jazzy McBikeshorts” Johnson. Of course, you likely have never heard of Charles Johnson either have you? Well, he is a lot like Wolcott, only not as boring. Not that Johnson is not boring, he is, but Wolcott is to boring what Janet Reno was to homely.As Bill Quick notes today

Sitting around shoving red-hot railroad spikes up my nose would be more fun than blogging about James Wolcott. Or Charles Johnson. In fact, the only thing I can think of that would be less fun than blogging about this pair of tools would be being forced to read their dreck.

I was dumbfounded by the decision of Ralph Reed to hire Lisa Baron as his press secretary. Baron had a notoriously bad reputation among Republican operatives, and why Reed would hire her — in a state where social conservatives dominated the GOP primary — was a mystery that no one ever satisfactorily explained.

I am, of course, being sarcastic here. It is sad that this woman would tell of her private affairs just to make a buck. Besides, what woman would brag about playing swallow the press secretary with Ari Fleischer?

How? Refundable tax credits, that’s how. The 2010 earned income credit is as high as $5,666 for taxpayers with three or more qualifying children. This is in addition to the $1,000 per child tax credit. That’s $8,666 which comes out of some rich guy’s pocket only to be redistributed to someone else.

There’s a word for a person who does that sort of thing without the imprimateur of a government program — thief.